James Monroe
James Monroe (1758 - 1831?) was one of the Governors of Jefferson during and after the Mexican Civil War. Monroe was born in Virginia on 28 April 1758, the son of a small plantation owner. Monroe inherited the plantation upon the death of his father in 1774, and enrolled in the College of William and Mary. During the North American Rebellion, Monroe left college to join the Continental Army, receiving an officer's commission. Monroe was wounded in General George Washington's attack on Trenton in December 1776, and returned to his plantation in Virginia to recuperate. After the Rebellion was suppressed, Monroe took part in the Wilderness Walk to Jefferson under General Nathanael Greene. Sobel says that Monroe was one of the Greene's important advisors, along with James Madison, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Arthur Middleton, and Edward Rutledge. Although Sobel does not specifically say so, Monroe presumably was a member of the council that Greene organized after the settlement of Jefferson. He may have been elected to the Chamber of Representatives after passage of the Lafayette Constitution. By 1815, Monroe had become one of the Governors of Jefferson, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Gaillard. Unlike Gaillard, Monroe was privy to Hamilton's plan to provoke a war between Jefferson and the Republic of Mexico by sending John Quincy Adams as an envoy to Mexican President José María Morelos to seek Mexican recognition of Jefferson's independence. After Adams returned to Jefferson, Monroe and Gaillard agreed with Hamilton that the slights he had received in Mexico City justified a declaration of war. Monroe was standing beside Hamilton on 16 May 1816 when he explained the decision to declare war to the Chamber. In the 1818 Jefferson elections, Monroe and Hamilton selected General Andrew Jackson to replace Gaillard, who had switched to the Liberty Party after learning of Hamilton's deceit. However, Jackson was in Mexico City, and did not reach Jefferson City until after the election. A week before election day, Hamilton died, and Monroe chose Josephus Carter to replace him on the ticket. Despite Jackson's absence and Hamilton's death, the Continentalist Party swept the elections in October 1818, and Monroe remained as Governor of Jefferson. During the next year, while Jackson worked to increase the administration's power and support, and Carter focused on administrative details, Monroe dealt with Jefferson's foreign affairs, presumably concentrating on relations with the Confederation of North America and Jefferson's French allies. After a coup attempt in Mexico City in February 1820, Jackson returned there, sending word back in June that he would remain until relations between the two countries had been "made more reasonable than they are at present." Monroe supported Jackson's efforts to form a union of Jefferson and Mexico, which resulted in the drafting of the Mexico City Constitution at the Mexico City Convention in September. Sobel makes no further mention of Monroe after the Mexico City Convention, but he presumably continued to serve in Jackson's government after the latter was elected President of the newly-created United States of Mexico. ---- Sobel's sources for the life of James Monroe are Hamilton's The War With Mexico (Jefferson City, 1818); Lewis Reins' John Gaillard: Nobility in Chains (Mexico City, 1943); and George Tinker's The Monroe-Jackson-Carter Administration (New York, 1967). Monroe, James Monroe, James Monroe, James Monroe, James